“Gentlemen, this is a robbery." The Great Boston Art Heist
[IMG]
[/IMG]
composite of works stolen
[IMG]
[/IMG]
Rembrandt's Storm on the Sea of Galilee
[IMG]
[/IMG]
empty frame that held Vermeer's The Concert
[IMG]
[/IMG]
The Concert by Vermeer
Twenty-five years ago, In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, a pair of thieves disguised as Boston police rang the night buzzer at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and spoke to the guard on duty ...“We’re police officers. We’re responding to a disturbance.” The guard, a new hire, broke protocol and allowed them entry through the Museum’s security door.
Once inside, the thieves asked that the guard come around from behind the desk, claiming that they recognized him and that there was a warrant out for his arrest. The guard walked away from the desk and away from the only alarm button. The guard was told to summon the other guard on duty to the security desk, which he did. The thieves then announced that it was a robbery, handcuffed both guards and took them into the basement where they were secured in separate places to pipes, with their hands, feet, and heads duct taped.
What happened next was the subject of a lecture by Anthony Amore, the Gardner’s security director, which I attended, at the Gardner this past week. Amore presented a step by step timeline of the thieves 81 minutes --99.9% of art heists last only about 7 1/2 minutes! -- inside the gallery, providing updated information and listing common myths that have developed over the years. The good news is that Amore believes that after 25 years, the museum has reasonable certainty that they will once again regain the 13 art works, valued at half a billion dollars.
The thieves major focus was on taking the Rembrandt’s in the Collection, which were located on the 2nd Floor Dutch Room. Amore explained that works by Rembrandt are targets of more robberies than any other master. The typical art thief knows that Rembrandt is very famous and his paintings are worth a lot of money. Such thieves are also typically unaware that they cannot sell them like other high value items through underground criminal fencing operations. Their only buyer is the robbed museum.
Of the Rembrandt pieces stolen, the major one was “Storm on the Sea of Galilee” the artist’s only seascape. An etched self portrait of the artist the size of a postage stamp was also taken.
Vermeer’s “The Concert” is the most valuable stolen object in the world, since only about 35 known works by the artist exist in the world today.
The five Degas works depicting a horse and jockey indicates that one of the thieves had an affinity for horse racing. Amore characterizes this as a “trophy” theft.
Another probable trophy theft was the bronze finial on the pole of a Napoleonic silk flag (or perhaps mistaken for gold).
“Chez Tortoni” by Manet. It is a mystery to the museum about its taking since the motion sensors, which picked up all of the other movement by the thieves, recorded no trace of this one.
Here is Amore’s list of common misperceptions about the robbery:
*Security at the museum was not lax or insufficient. The museum’s surveillance technology was state of the art at the time. The thieves stole the museum’s surveillance VCR, but investigators recovered the printout of the motion detector’s timeline showing when the thieves entered and left each room.
*the paintings were not hacked away from their frames with knives while on the walls. A box cutter or other fine edged razor was almost certainly used and frames were found lying flat on the floor (rehung later by museum staff).
*cut out paintings can be put back.
*the guards are not dead.
*the stolen art is not on the walls of an evil billionaire. It is a myth perpetuated by Hollywood movies -- it never happens in art thefts.
*the I.R.A. had nothing to do with the theft.
*the works are probably not scattered. The investigators believe them to be in the general area of Boston. However, they don’t believe the thieves have any control of them at this point.
*the FBI and the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office are not offering the thieves a “get out of jail free card” if they return the art. However, the museum is hoping to get the attention of those who might have or know the whereabouts of the art by publicly offering a $5 million reward.
In 2013 the Museum announced that it knows who stole the art and believes that time is on their side. There is a new effort to enlist the active participation of the Mayor of Boston, the Governor of Massachusetts and Cardinal O’Malley in appealing publicly to whomever might have the art to return it.
A virtual tour of the track of the theft through the Gardner Museum is here
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/resources/theft
A big read here from a Boston Globe reporter who has worked on this story for 20 years:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/03/11/does-connecticut-shed-hold-secrets-gardner-heist/LHOwffI4jrOegKupbLdHwJ/story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
When I read Schama or Schjehldahl I get thoroughly intimidated.
So I am content just being a bit creative and trying to spread the art history and my little tries at ekphrasis so folks at DU can enjoy it. That's what makes me very pleased!
But thank you for your kind words. I will think about it...
blaming the guard. It remains true that he went against protocol, but he was victimized, too, and feared for his life.
To this day there is a disagreement between the two guards as to which thief had the fake mustache.
Will click through to get the whole story.
Such passions as yours should be justly rewarded. I only hope that they are.
You bring beauty to DU and your Friday posts are always sought out, hopefully by many here.
I was working for a television production company making security training videos, and my job was to sell them to facilities all over greater Boston. I sold the Gardner early in my career to the security director Lyle Grindle, who was also director when the theft took place. He told me this story and explained why they didn't fire him: they knew he'd done everything possible at the time to prevent a theft. They gave him a bigger budget instead, and he became a pioneer in museum security for the lessons everyone learned along the way.
Fascinating story and a helluva guy. The art will return someday, I hope. Thanks for posting! 
I'm pretty sure they have plenty of "starts" or at least the retiring museum director referenced them that she experienced over the last 25 years. She's been at this for all those years! It's like her life work. But wotta story that is! There are lots of books about this incident, but only read the most recent ones...earlier books contained errors that my lecturer corrected in his talk.
And yes, I do kinda take this personally! 
